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Friday, 8 January 2016

THE SLOW REVEAL

The chances are that, if you have read my blog in the past, you will know how the Space Race fascinated me as a child. I have written a number of poems about it. They are scattered throughout the blog.Here is the latest.

THE
SLOW REVEAL

The
composition of moon rock did not interest me. I was twelve.

Neil
and Buzz were hopping about the lunar surface,

transported
there in flimsy machinery, the earth a disc in their sky.

I
was so taken with the idea, humans free in the universe.

Yes,
I was thinking big, beyond the moon,

beyond
Mars and out into the Big Black.

I
am no longer twelve,

now
the science intrigues,

to
an extent.

I
am no longer twenty four and see their compromises,

the
propaganda trade offs, the political expediency

of
using war criminals with their benevolent butchers smiles.

I
am no longer forty eight

and
know that out there in the stars,

we
would have acted out our history.

Colonisation,
exploitation, atrocity.

Listening
to the news, this sopping Sunday morning,

all
three seem hard wired into our brains.

One of my earliest memories was of Yuri Gagarin. I followed every mission without understanding the science. There was a romance to the whole endeavour that went far beyond the politics.Speaking of romance...

just
after you died, I wished that rather you had ran off with
someone/anyone, left me with the kids, there would have been a chance
I'd have seen you again,

I
could, I thought, have taken comfort in the fact that you still walked the world,
and smiled, and laughed, and lent to it the easy grace you always had
in life

that
moment has passed

I
am here with our grown up children and memories

the
night is dark, I light a candle

Nothing really to say about this poem. I've been listening to lots of Brizilian music this week. Here's Astrud Gilberto with Corcovado.